Red Dead's History

May 1, 2024
An intriguing look at how the gaming age offers imaginative possibilities for the teaching of history. Video games have come a long way, writes Olsson, since he spent many hours of his younger life perched in front of a screen. In the Covid-19 lockdown period, he rediscovered gaming and was amazed at the degree of development and sophistication of recent decades, something highlighted by the popular Red Dead series. As a professor of history at the University of Tennessee specializing in the post-Civil War era, he came up with the idea of creating a course connected to the game, using it as a platform to explore the social and political tensions in the U.S. in the late 19th century, when the game is set. The author shows how the series, especially Red Dead Redemption II, contains a huge amount of historical information. The games are certainly violent, but it was a violent time, as society struggled to come to terms with rapid industrialization, emerging corporate capitalism, and entrenched racial conflict. The series follows a group of (fairly) honorable outlaws as they travel from the Midwest, through the South, and into the Appalachians. The Red Dead designers obviously devoted great attention to the detailed artwork and narrative development, although a problem is that many of the issues raised in the game relate more to the 1870s than the 1890s. Olsson suggests that the next installment in the series should be set in the years immediately after the Civil War. "When we balance the ledger book of good and bad, the game ultimately does far more to advance historical understanding than not," he writes. This book is not for everyone, but it is informative and enjoyable. Olsson has much to say about connecting the past to the present in ways that are novel and fun.

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Starred review from July 1, 2024

During the peak of the COVID lockdown, Olsson (history, Univ. of Tennessee; Agrarian Crossings: Reformers and the Remaking of the US and Mexican Countryside) felt an urge to return to the digital realm of historical video games. Red Dead Redemption II was his choice. Set in a fictionalized West of 1899, it featured a bunch of idealist bandits under Arthur Morgan, a lieutenant in Dutch Van der Linde's gang. Morgan's henchmen are the last gasp of anarchy in an age of expanding hierarchy and control, roaming across the Great West, Deep South and Appalachia, and briefly the Caribbean. The game addresses issues such as women's suffrage, railroad capitalism, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples, the Pinkertons as strike breakers, and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow. When classes resumed, Olsson used the game to teach his students--more video game savvy than history savvy--about the conflicts that convulsed the U.S. between 1865 and 1920. He used their enthusiasm for the game to draw them into an exploration of broad themes in American social history. It turned out to be an attractive way to mine history without trivializing it. VERDICT Given the game's popularity, this distinctive history book, both substantial and thoughtful, should dive off the shelves.--David Keymer

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